Meyerowitz Honored with Leica Hall of Fame Award

An award-winning street photographer who has been creating memorable images in the great photojournalistic tradition since 1962, Joel Meyerowitz pioneered the use of color in this slice of life genre, and his classic book on Cape Cod, “Cape Light” was instrumental in changing the prevailing dismissive attitudes toward color photography. Within a few days of the 9/11 attacks on The World Trade Center, Meyerowitz began to create an archive of the destruction and recovery at Ground Zero that consists of over 8,000 images of the aftermath of the tragedy. In this latest Leica Portrait video, Joel shares the story of his transition from junior art director to legendary photographer. Read our interview with Joel on the Leica Camera blog: http://bit.ly/HOOADs Shot and Edited by Trevor Bayack Video Assistant Brian Butnick

The acclaimed photographer Joel Meyerowitz will be honoured for his lifework with the Leica Hall of Fame Award and a major exhibition in the course of the ‘A Celebration of Photography’ event being held by Leica Camera AG on 18 January 2017. The exhibition in the Leica Galerie Wetzlar opens on 19 January and can be seen until 31 March 2017. 

Joel Meyerowitz was born in New York in 1938 and grew up in the Bronx. He studied painting and initially worked as an advertising art director. Meyerowitz began shooting on 35 mm colour film in 1962. In the following year, he alternated this with black-and-white before returning to the richness of storytelling in colour. New York always remained the dominant focus of his life as a photographer – from his early works from the 1960s to his evocative images taken at Ground Zero in the aftermath of 9/11. Meyerowitz lives and works in New York and Tuscany.